Books, Read You Must
Knowledge is Power!
What to Do When Someone You Love is Depressed: A Practical, Compassionate, and Helpful Guide by Mitch Golant Ph.D. and Susan K. Golant
Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body by Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. (If you have limited capacity right now, and that’s okay, or even if you don’t, I highly recommend this book. Easily accessible and understood and less than 100 pages. I consider this essential in helping you understand trauma and how it is held in your body. It includes exercises you can do to help you.)
When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold S. Kushner
The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment by Babette Rothschild
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (story and insights by a Nazi concentration camp survivor who was a psychiatrist, if you are unfamiliar)
The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine, with Ann Frederick
To Begin Again: The Journey Toward Comfort, Strength, and Faith in Difficult Times by Naomi Levy
Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges by Steven M. Southwick and Dennis S. Charney
Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky with Connie Burk (I highly recommend this book, as well as any training you can get with Laura, if you work in a field where you are giving a lot of yourself in high tension jobs whether its social services, ecology, the medical field, et cetera)
LINKS
Great, easy to understand overview of trauma from Psychology Today. Includes types of trauma, effects of trauma, treatment, and controversies/misconceptions about trauma. Highly recommended if you are unfamiliar with the “basics.”
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), are potentially traumatic events that occur during ages 0 to 17 and include such things as domestic violence, parental substance abuse and/or mental health issues, and incarceration of a parent. These events can have lasting impacts on a person’s future mental and/or physical health, potential for substance abuse, and their ability to have healthy relationships. There are a lot of sites about ACEs and I would encourage you to look at them. The ten-question quiz to obtain your ACEs score plus other interesting information is found in the website listed below. Higher scores mean increased likelihood of long-term health issues and a score of four or higher is considered clinically significant. I saw how higher scores played out daily with so many people in my social service career; people with higher scores having significant mental, physical and substance abuse issues and unhealthy relationships.
ACEs and Resiliency. Just because you have an ACEs score 4 or higher, it is not a death sentence. This is the “knowledge is power” thing. If you are a parent this can bring your attention to the environment you may be raising your child in and the potential consequences. As a social service provider this may help you understand your clients and the origin of their “issues” better. As an adult with a higher ACEs score, you can now choose to live a healthier lifestyle (mindset included!) to ameliorate the stress and trauma of your childhood. My score is a 6. That I have the mental and physical health issues (muddles!) that I do does not surprise me. I am choosing to be mindful of having healthy habits to stop or slow down the consequences of my stress and trauma throughout my life. Below is another ACEs quiz as well as a 14-question resiliency quiz. The higher the raw score in the resiliency quiz the easier it might be for you to overcome stress and trauma. And like many things, you can learn to be more resilient, so if your resiliency score is not high, do not despair.
The site below does a good job of explaining resiliency as it pertains to children:
https://www.centerforchildcounseling.org/resilience-a-powerful-weapon-in-the-fight-against-aces/
Psychologist Abraham Maslow created a Hierarchy of Needs and I used this often when training my interns, mentees, coworkers and other colleagues (aka “my people.” I miss my people!! Love you awesome people!!). As a point of discussion for social service providers, this hierarchy can help lessen the frustration when working with clients if we can understand that if people are “stuck” in a place where they are desperately trying to meet their physiological and safety needs, then how can we expect them to easily perform tasks that may require their taxed brains to do higher-order processes? This is a step back and have a wider perspective moment in case management. I also think the hierarchy can serve those who are in the midst of a traumatic moment to know why all else seems to fall by the wayside if we are in survival mode. I think a good dose of compassion and empathy should accompany when one considers where a person may be at in their life, whether you are a service provider or looking at yourself in the mirror. Be kind people. It cost nothing to have kind, soft eyes.
Beck Depression Inventory. If you think you may have depression, taking this inventory could be helpful. The site listed below gives a nice overview of the inventory and a link to take it.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) checklist. A PDF that is easy to score and can be printed and taken to a therapist or doctor. I am also a big believer in doing checklists like this over time. Date and keep your checklists, maybe add some simple comments about what you are doing or thinking at that point in your life. This can serve as a great way to reflect on the progress you are making. Or when things are getting hazy this can help you focus on that maybe you need to engage or reengage in seeking more help and support as sometimes when we go down that rabbit hole we are not fully aware of what is going on with us. With PTSD our memories tend to be shit, so this is also a concrete way to “remember” things and how they were during a certain time.
https://www.bu.edu/wheelock/files/2018/05/PTSD-checklist-Adult.pdf
Symptoms of PTSD. If you think you or a loved one has PTSD, here is a site that provides information on the symptoms.
Understanding the connection between trauma and addiction. Trauma and substance use/abuse can go hand-in-hand. Using/abusing substances can help numb the pain and keep one disconnected, but in the long run, using and abusing substances will only make things worse. Help is out there! Here is a good informative website about trauma and addiction.
https://www.bicyclehealth.com/blog/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd-addiction
Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, Trauma Stewardship. If you are someone who works in a trauma-adjacent field (with humans or our fellow creatures or other living things on this planet) I implore you to check out this website!!!
Anxiety checklist.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-minute-therapist/201605/anxiety-checklist
Self-care assessment worksheet. This site also has other cool assessment worksheets.
Self-care ideas.
Stages of Change model. Good insight if you are thinking about changing your behavior or considering putting a plan into action. Also good for loved ones to know the process (with the advice that you cannot help someone who does not want to be helped. I encourage you to do your part, but be mindful if you are continually beating your head against the wall with no results, and don’t forget your self-care!).
https://medicine.llu.edu/academics/resources/stages-change-model
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s treatment improvement protocol Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services. I LOVE this resource! Anyone and everyone who works in social services should read and abide by this guide! Even if you are not a service provider, I recommend this as a valuable read for historical background and understanding all the elements of trauma (the first three chapters will really help you understand the facets and depth of trauma from the sociocultural perspective, trauma awareness, and understanding the impacts of trauma).
https://store.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/d7/priv/sma14-4816.pdf
Information on the concepts of flight, fight, freeze, and fawn responses in PTSD. Both articles give good examples if you are unfamiliar with the concepts. But the first one from Simple Psychology seems to give examples more about the immediate impact of traumatic stress
https://www.simplypsychology.org/fight-flight-freeze-fawn.html
Where the second one from MindBodyGreen speaks more to my experience in living long-term with PTSD. My go to place is freeze where my brain in big on depression, disassociating, and liking social isolation—though I am liking to be more social these days. Ahhh, progress! :)
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/fight-flight-freeze-fawn-trauma-responses
Because I don’t want you to feel like this
Connect with me! I need you!
Just a reminder, Fabulous Reader, that I am not a clinician or mental health therapist. I spent my career, mostly, as a professional social worker. Social workers love resources and connecting you with them!!! I have no affinity or preference for one link over another and no one has paid me to put their link here. My criteria for placing a link here was based on my professional experience, training, and education, and if I thought this would be an appropriate, easy, and understandable way for you to get more information; no more, no less. Please do your own searches; just make sure the source appears to be legitimate and check the information in sites against each other. The more you know, the more empowered I hope you will feel!!
We are in this together, Fabulous Reader. Here I sit on August 19, 2022, constructing this website. And I got to the part where I want to recommend some books to you, books I have read. Books that got me through hard times and helped me understand myself better and not feel so all alone; books that inspired me, buoyed me and connected me to others who have survived and thrived through hard times. And then it just hit me, three year, nine months and eleven days out from the Paradise Camp Fire. . . . I was not there when my house was engulfed (obviously, or ghost writer would take on a new meaning), but I could suddenly see my beloved books being consumed by the flames, along with all of my other belongings. And I could hear all the well-meaning voices, immediately after the fire, who felt it was necessary to tell me that “It was only stuff.” My response to them (not then, but now), “Yeah, well it was MY stuff.” (I would recommend that you NOT say that to someone who lost everything in a fire or natural disaster. Just listen to them or ask what they would like to talk about, if anything, maybe they just want to be held. Just sayin’.) So I had a good sob-fest, one like I have not had yet. Of course I have cried about the fire, but not the mournful, sobbing deep, soulful crying that is still buried deep within me. PTSD (complex or otherwise), at least for me, has been the great duller, number, stifler, and compressor of many feelings, grief included. So when the sobs caught in my throat and the tears and snot started flooding I let it rip with abandon. I needed this, I really did. And to enhanced the feelings of grief, sorrow, loss, futility, and senselessness, like fertilizer on a garden, I put on Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, opus 11, loud, because even before the fire, that music could make me cry.
Above are pictures of the space I turned into a studio, in the room that used to be my partner’s, a relationship I ended just seven months before the fire. Look at me at that time, trying to take control of my life and care for myself when caring for others was becoming unbearable. Here’s me, being resilient, making lemonade out of lemons, making a beautiful space to make jewelry, art, and write. Look at the inspiring and humorous books on the bookshelf. Look at my art on my walls that makes my PTSD brain (from working at CPS and not yet complex) feel better. Custom paint job, new flooring; so cute, so calming; what a perfect space for Bunny. Fifty days after these pictures were taken, the fire came and took it all. Fuck my life.
But no. Here I sit. Like the Phoenix, I rise up out of the ashes. I may be a tear-stained, snot encrusted Phoenix at the moment, but I am nonetheless, still a Phoenix!! And we are in this together, Fabulous Reader, putting our tenacity and toughness out into The Universe.
(And lest you worry, the cat in the first picture above, is my Bengal son, Ku-Co. We evacuated the fire together.)
Photos of bookcase, links images, and Victorian Lady and cat, Pixabay
Ku-Co and Bunny August 7, 2022